Wednesday, June 25, 2008

My work :)

I was looking through my poems today (the link on the blog works, but the site is in remodeling, so the poems are not available for non-users yet) and I found a poem I had forgotten I wrote. It seemed fitting for today, because it completes my being-lost feeling.


Start again

I begged them all to stop and cheer,
I cried so loud the depths could hear,
I shouted and I spat in rage,
I couldn't turn another page.
The story was so true and blunt,
It ignited my selfish heart.
It was a story about me
And what I finally come to be...
A big mass of information,
Decaying to termination.

Hope is just a feeble concept,
Money's only but a thing,
Life has palpability,
To which we all so dearly cling.
We give it up so hard and tough,
Even when we have enough.

Some give it with relief,
Others take it in a brief.
We all think with disbelief,
That it doesn't end so fast,
That we have a future and a past,
But we never know for sure.
That's why this life, I adore.

I don't want to see the story end,
Whatever rules I have to bend
Without hurting those apart from me,
I couldn't bear to do the wrong I see.
The wrong the world makes my eyes endure,
The world where nothing can assure,
That what you love will stay unharmed
And what you want shall be done.

I don't have the power to abolish,
Those who stubbornly want to demolish,
Peace and love and friendship too,
But I could fight with you.
For the sake of my existence,
I cold hurt you in an instance,
It's still survival of the fittest.

Whatever more we do invent,
I'm tired of hearing that
It's all built with good intent,
When all things have double usage,
They can destroy or do some good,
It depends on the dosage
Of the user's mood.

I close the book of no return,
I don't want to see the end.
The lines I read make my brain burn.
Before finish I want to turn
And start again.

Monday, June 23, 2008

Nonsense

The equality calculation predispositions an inaccurate contribution to socially interacting endeavor, that overthrew the malicious suppositions of the participating party...

If you are from Earth, you speak English and you are in full control of your mental capabilities, there's a fairly good chance that you didn't understand much from the previous paragraph.

Imagine that you are in a room full of people, all extremely specialized and trained in only one field each. Imagine you enter this room, without knowing one thing about any of the fields the individuals specialize in. The people are talking, nobody can understand one single thing. How do you ask somebody where the bathroom is? How do you ask for a glass of water or for directions?

It's not enough that we know a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff, we have to be able to share that through means of communication that are easily understood by others, otherwise, we couldn't help anybody find a bathroom, but we could tell them the Theory of Relativity...I doubt they would care in that precise moment.

Today I listened to a lot of oldies from Marilyn Manson, they kind of kept me awake during the hot hours of the day when I had to work on my final thesis...but, besides the point. I was listening to The Nobodies. I have listened to this song too many time than I can count, and only today I thought about reeeeally listening to the lyrics, but I couldn't make out a lot of what he said, so, of course, I searched the last verses online and I found this:

We are the nobodies
wannabe somebodies
when we're dead,
they'll know just who we are

Some children died the other day
we fed machines and then we prayed
puked up and down in morbid faith
you should have seen the ratings that day

It struck me, we live in such a morbid society. Of course you're going to say it's not always like this, that there are nice things that take place in this particular human civilization corner (like...balloon rides stuck to the ground or smoking hookahs until 2 AM talking about toilet paper and economics), but the sad reality is that, there are really f***ed-up things in this world and all the nonsense doesn't help.

Here are the Nobodies:




Let's be "somebodies" who give a damn if people need our help!

Friday, June 20, 2008

Good or Bad?

Stop being way nicer than you really are! Stop doing favors that you hate doing! Stop helping others when you need help more than them! Stop thinking that you are indestructible, incorruptible and hard to manipulate?

We are feeble and bad and stupid and lazy and we stress ourselves about problems that we, many times, don't have. We are week and we can hurt those around us. The only thing that saves us from what we are is the will to do good.

It's always a matter of choice. Nobody says that doing good is the easy choice, it's easier to ignore the people who ask you for help, it's easier to avoid/be mean to your enemies than be kind to them (who does that anyway? who is kind to their enemies? that's the proverbial turn the other cheek business sent to the battle field of current society). Whatever you think of doing, ignore that and do some good, just don't be false about it. This is the trickiest thing ever: do something good genuinely, even if you don't want to do it or if it's too hard.

Sometimes it's a challenge for us all, to test the power of our will, sometimes we just make the easiest choice and do nothing and many times, we do something that, if we have a conscience, we regret after a while.

I'll always be sorry for being mean to my grandfather just before he died, or being disrespectful so many times to my grandmother. I'll always be sorry for killing a big, green and sparkly caterpillar when I was a kid. I'll always be sorry for hurting my mom by ignoring her or for hurting my dad by lying to him, I'll always be sorry for not being there for my friends when they needed to talk about what was bothering them, but I was in no mood. I am sorry for not making the right choice or thinking the right thing too many times. I'm sorry for flirting with guys that were hitched (not with me). I am sorry for all of this, but I don't regret one thing.

Being alive it's all about making mistakes and learning from them. If you learn from the mistakes that others have made, great, but, usually, we learn better if we actually experience the consequences of our mistakes.

Stay safe! Be good! Stay Alive!


Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Savour the moment!

Everlasting moments...as oxymoronic as it may sound, there are such things. These moments stay itched in your brain a life time. They're like small videos that you remember whenever you do something related to that particular moment. For instance last night was high school moments night.

In a room full of people my age, very nice and smart people indeed, with two hookahs and two bottles of red wine, we strolled down memory lane. People remembered they used to wear black instead of pink, their obsessions for 2Pac, the fact that we all knew the lyrics for Linkin Park's "In the end" may have struck a cord, we remembered cartoons and shows that we used to watch on Italian or other TV channels (this was a little before high school) - Sailor Moon, Captain Planet, Power Rangers etc. etc. etc..

In the wee hours of the night, smoke was everywhere, the bottles were empty and the room was full of Marilyn Manson, Limp Bizkit, P.O.D., Stained, System of a Down...ahhh, sweet moments from high school that allow you to have sweet moments in college. It's like a chain of memories that trigger more fun memories. After all, what we have in our heads makes us create the next and next and next everlasting memories...circumstances might help too ;).


Monday, June 16, 2008

Hello Boys and Girls!

My new found infatuation with a certain TV series has reached its apex today. I am delighted to say that I finally had a very pleasant day.

I have to admit that my current fascination with this particular TV show is not a usual one, nor that I am particularly fond of such stories, but this one is aimed to please my scandal-and -relationship-twists mental need (and I didn't even know I had one). I am talking, of course, about Gossip Girl. Judge all you like, if you haven't seen it, you should, no matter how cynic you think you can be.

Moreover I found a new song that I love, when I was watching another scandal-full episode on the show. Have a look and tell me what you think!



In other news, I'm still waiting for the perfect mood to seriously start working on my final thesis. So far, a lot of moods have auditioned, none have gotten the part.

Happy final thesis writing for those who already ended the casting ;)!


Have a pleasant week my dear readers!

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Focus Group Mayhem

In the quest of writing my final thesis, I have finally managed to complete part of the qualitative research, by doing three focus groups. I have never thought that it would be so hard to gather 24 people, by offering free chocolate and cookies. Luckily, students actually showed up for this research and I had people to moderate in front of.
It was fun and it had a lot of "surprises": people telling me half an hour before the focus group that they couldn't come, people laughing at each other for no reason, people fighting about unrelated to the research topics, without even knowing each other prior to the interview session etc..

I found out I really liked doing this, although I have a lot more to learn about moderating focus groups. A lot of insights came out and a lot more will reveal themselves after I analyze the FG videos.

After moderating, participating and observing focus groups, I have to admit I like moderating best. Maybe because my personality is dominant and stubborn in many aspects of my life or maybe I secretly like to be a professor and never admit it, but moderating is exciting, it can test your patience and your interviewer skills, it can even be a great crisis management training.

Overall it was the most existing part of this final thesis, which I have to be done with in a week. The countdown begins!

...but before that, yesterday was the anniversary of 1 year since we left for the States. There are a lot of sweeeeeeeeet memories, a lot of fun facts, a lot of songs that remind me every day that last summer was the best summer in my life.

Here's Gym Class Heroes. Close your eyes and imagine you're driving to San Francisco :)




...we are fragile...

Thursday, June 5, 2008

Back in action :)

Being too hot and all, it's been a while since I thought...on the blog, of course. With one more exam around the corner and a whole final thesis to prepare, time and the weather are not my best friends these days. I'm sure I'm not the only one in a time pickle, but I am sure that I'm amongst the very few who managed to be ostracized by their final thesis coordonator. Ah yes, the sweet sound of panic rings in my ears.

I came home a nervous-wreck-to-be. The warm, safe and smothering air in the room filled me with the joy of not having any more problems than I already had, but...surprize!!! In the late hours of this beautifully-wretched evening, I found out that the professor that didn't get my homework emails, also didn't pass along my new grade. Therefore, I can now consider myself flunked, until further notice.
Ahhhh, the satisfying grief of getting the maximum score in the seminar, passing the exam and somehow, still, flunkig the subject. Isn't it swell?!?

Maybe tomorrow the tables will turn and I will have a beautiful day.



Maybe your day won't be too bad as well. Maybe we'll be closer to happiness tomorrow or maybe stupidity and bureaucracy will overthrow it all, yet again. We'll found out in a few hours won't we? Until then: good night and pleasant subconscious trails!